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The West could have ended the local epidemic in about 1/2 year with the help of mRNA vaccines. While medical system is patting themselves on the shoulder, they
by nojokes 5y ago
The West could have ended the local epidemic in about 1/2 year with the help of mRNA vaccines.
While medical system is patting themselves on the shoulder, they completely missed the opportunity.
The missed actions were
a) human challenge studies to tremendously speed up the validation of efficacy and
b) war time like effort to invest into vaccine production facilities.
Human challenge studies were rejected by ethical committees - like the risk of health of few tens of thousands were greater than the life of millions.
I am not sure what prevented the proper scale up of the production.
- seoaeu 5y agoThe mRNA vaccines were approved back in December and yet six months later they've only made enough doses for a couple hundred million people. What evidence do you have that a "war time like effort" could have ramped up production wildly faster than what they achieved? It isn't like there are any unused vaccine factories or production machines just lying around, and there'd certainly be no shortage of eager investors fund increasing capacity faster if that was possible
- nojokes 5y agoWar time effort = create new vaccine factories when needed, share the know-how, do what ever necessary. And when did they start to ramp up the production?
- seoaeu 5y agoModerna started ramping up back in August [0], two and a half months after they'd dosed the first stage 1 trial participant [1]. I'm just really not convinced that their scaling up was that bad that they could have done it six months faster. There are real bottlenecks involved, and some extremely specialized equipment. Not to mention that even in WW2, the United States' new naval shipyards took something like 9 months of ramping up before they launched their first ship. [0]: https://investors.modernatx.com/news-releases/news-release-details/moderna-announces-supply-agreement-us-government-initial-100 https://investors.modernatx.com/news-releases/news-release-d... [1]: https://investors.modernatx.com/news-releases/news-release-details/moderna-completes-enrollment-phase-2-study-its-mrna-vaccine https://investors.modernatx.com/news-releases/news-release-d...
- nojokes 5y agoAnd they should already have started in spring or before and share the knowledge to others how to make mRNA vaccines.